Did anybody benefited there without investing there. Look like they have too much bots ,paid upvotes and likes and hardly anything for a good content.
So I think only few might able to succeed there without investing.
Steemit could be a great platform, but nowadays it is overrun by bots and by people begging for upvotes. There are so many sh*tposts made every second, that a new member's (high quality) content goes unnoticed very easily. These two major conserns of mine (and yours) can get in the way of mass adoption and in the way of the increase of the price. Also, if I am right, SBD was designed to be valued $1 (like Tether), to provide stability to the whole Steem ecosystem. In December, when everyone was talking about crypto the community grew like crazy and the price couldn't sustain, it increased, but now as the interest in the whole crypto space is declining, the price of SBD will hold the $1 range.